Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Open Baffle Speakers on the cheap


These Open Baffle Speakers were made using inexpensive components from PartsExpress. The tweeters use the smallest Dayton waveguide plus a cheap piezo super tweeter (the same waveguide used on the ZillaTweeter supertweeter). The piezo doesn't sound as good but does the trick if budget is limited. The midrange is the now discontinued Pioneer B20 full range driver. PartsExpress sells a substitute by GRS but they do not sound quite the same (the GRS is more forward with less bass). The woofers are 15" Jamo buyouts. Their specs suited open baffle designs and worked great! Just find a large diameter woofer with a high Qts (.75 or higher is my estimate) and pair it with a good subwoofer amp. This way you can alter the woofers output and crossover frequency to match with the main driver of your choice.

This was a fun project that turned out really well. My son loves them!